You’ve put in a lot of hard work to make a great mobile app, and published it in the app stores.

Hooray!

Now what?

It’s time to get people to download and use your app.

After all, if you don’t care about it, who will?

To help you get started, I’ve put together a list of 40 App Store SEO tips to boost app downloads.

But wait, what is App Store SEO?

App Store Search Engine Optimization (App Store SEO)App Store SEO is the process of optimizing mobile apps for the purpose of achieving a higher rank in the app store search results and top charts rankings. Due to its similarities to search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, App Store SEO is also referred to as App Store Optimization (ASO), App Search Optimization, and Mobile App SEO.

App Name Format

Keep the actual brand name short and sweet. You can then append this short brand name with a few keywords, typically preceded by a dash or a semicolon.

App Store SEO Tips:

App Name FormatUse the format “Brand Name – Keywords” or “Brand Name: Keywords” to include relevant keywords in your name.

Use this tool to analyze your app name and get the recommendations of best name format and length.

Here are some real examples:

Google Maps – GPS Navigation

Amazon – Shopping made easy

eBay: Buy & Sell – Find Deals

Pandora – Free Music & Radio

The Weather Channel: Forecast

It’s also important to use only URL-friendly characters in your title, particularly in the App Store. It is because Apple uses the app name to create your app URL. Also, avoid any special characters in your app name, like the trademark or copyright symbol. They will cause iTunes to refer to your app’s numeric ID to scan for relevant keywords instead of your app name.

App Name Length

iOS App Store: Apple limits the app name to a maximum of 30 characters in iOS 11. So you have to make good use of every character in your app name.

App Store SEO Tips:

Brand Name: Use 23 characters or less for optimal presentation on every device.

Total Length: To make the most of the 30 character limit, use more than 20 characters to include a few relevant app store keywords after your brand name.

Google Play Store: App name in Google Play Store is limited to 50 characters. Again, use a short and sweet brand name. If you also have an iOS version, use a consistent brand name, and use the remaining space to include a few app store keywords to boost your search exposure.

App Subtitle (introduced in iOS 11)

It is ideal to include some keywords in this field to communicate the value of your app. More importantly, the keywords in your subtitle will be indexed in app store search. So be sure to make good use of this precious field to cover some important keywords.

App Description & Keywords

iOS App Store: iOS App Store does not search for keywords in the app description, but that does not mean iOS developers can be lazy with it. Read the sections below for more tips about App Description.

Google Play Store: you need to be careful with the app description. It is because Google pulls keywords from your description to be your app’s keywords. Incorporate your app store keywords in the description in natural and sensible sentences. Note that keywords in the above-the-fold section (the first few lines) carries more weight than the rest of the description copy in Google’s ranking algorithm, so remember to put your main keywords in this section. And this leads us to the next tip below…

App Description – The Expanded Description

Highlight the features of your app here. Use spacing and bulleted lists to make it easy to read. If possible, also list out all the social proofs, awards, and honorable mentions your app has received. Don’t forget to include your app’s social media links too.

Also, Google Play Store allows rich formatting and emoji in your app description. Make good use of these to make your description organized and stand out from the crowd.

Communicate in the tone of your brand. Use terminology your target audience will appreciate and understand.

App Description Length

We analyzed the description length of the top 100 apps. Here are some findings:

90% of top 100 apps use more than 589 characters

90% of top 100 apps use less than 3385 characters.

Though app description length doesn’t have a very big impact compared to other factors, it is still a good idea to keep your length within this range.

App Store SEO Tips:

Benchmark with the Top 100 AppsDo you want to know the latest statistics of description length? Just use this App Store SEO tool. The tool benchmarks your app with the top 100 apps and tells you how to improve.

App Promotional Text (introduced in iOS 11)

iOS App Store: This field is introduced in iOS 11 and available in the iOS App Store only.

Your app’s promotional text appears at the top of the description and is limited to 170 characters.

Though the promotional text is NOT indexed in the app store search, the good news is you can change this text anytime without releasing a new version.

App Store SEO Tips:

A/B Test on Promotional TextYou can use this promotional text to do A/B test of different messages quickly without doing a version update. Once you’ve found the message that gives you the best conversion rate, you can then turn the contents of the message into your app store keywords.

App Icon

To design a good icon, keep your design simple and eye-catchy. Do not cram the small space with many items or words. You want people to remember the icon after the first impression. Also, make sure your icon will still look good when it is scaled down to the smallest size required by App Store / Google Play. It should also look good against light and dark background.

To get more design inspirations, browse the top-rated apps in your category and Apple/Google’s top picks. Also, make sure your icon is different from your competitor’s to avoid brand confusion. Contrasting colors, different shapes or adding a frame can also help.

App Store SEO Tips:

Branded vs Functional IconIf your app has an established brand, use the logo to make your brand and your future products recognizable. If your app is a functional app, use one object to describe your app.

App Store Keywords – Getting Keyword Ideas

To begin with, try and come up with at least 50 keywords. Here are some great ASO tools that help you with the app store keyword ideas. These tools will then give you many keyword ideas to consider. And they are all free!

Remember that your keywords must be relevant to your app. Don’t be tempted to use a keyword just because it is popular, but not relevant to your app. You want your app to be found by users who will really download and enjoy your app.

App Store SEO Tips:

Time-sensitive Keywords
Let’s illustrate the idea by an example: using “Rio” and its related keywords during the Olympics 2016 would greatly help the exposure of your sports apps. Your app would also have a better chance to get into the app store’s feature lists too.

Review KeywordsDid you know the words in your app user reviews are indexed by the app store search engine?

That is why review analysis is a very good way for getting app store keyword ideas. Your app reviews speak your users’ mind. And the words are highly related to how they would search for your app. Just by looking at your review keywords, you will be surprised to find out the keyword ideas that you have never thought of before.

There are some review analysis tools in the market. And this one uses Artificial Intelligence on your user reviews to find out what your users like and don’t like about your app.

App Store Keywords – Selecting Your Keywords

With your initial set of app store keywords, you have to pick a strategy on how to optimize the right keywords. There are some keyword research tools that help you with this app store keyword optimization process. These tools provide the popularities (or search traffic) as well as difficulties (or chances) of your app store keywords. In general, carefully select around 25 app store keywords for the next release of your app.

App Store SEO Tips:

App Store Keyword Optimization Strategy
For a new app, choose the app store keywords with low difficulty and reasonable popularity. They help your app gain the initial momentum. After gaining the initial momentum, start using app store keywords with higher popularity and reasonable difficulty. They help your app stack up more downloads. Work your way up gradually as your app gets more popular.

If you don’t know what difficulty and popularity you should use for your keywords, use this tool that makes the decision for you using AI.

Long-tail App Store KeywordsUse longer keyword phrases (aka long-tail keywords) to outrank the competition. For example, it is hard to outrank Zynga Poker by the competitive keyword “Poker” (high difficulty). But you have a better chance to outrank it by the keyword phrase “Poker Casino”. It is because “Poker Casino” is less competitive (lower difficulty).

5X Your App Store KeywordsYou can multiply the character space to store your app store keywords using this trick. That means you can use up to 500 characters to store your keywords for getting a lot more app store search traffic!

Retiring Poor App Store Keywords
If you have already released your app with your target keywords, check your current app ranking of these keywords. Keep those keywords that your app ranks within top 10, and replace the rest with new keywords in your next release.

For Android developers: Google Play doesn’t have the keyword metadata. Instead, Google pulls keywords from your description to be your app store keywords. Incorporate your keywords in the description in natural and sensible sentences. Note that keywords in the above-the-fold section (the first few lines) carries more weight than the rest of the description copy in Google’s ranking algorithm, so remember to put your main app store keywords in this section.

In-App Purchases

Both Apple and Google index the names of in-app purchases (IAP) in the app store search.

And in iOS 11, each IAP has its own display name, promotional image, and description. In-app purchases can also appear in search results and be featured on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs. You can display a maximum of 20 IAPs on your product page.

To maximize your search exposure, be creative and include some app store keywords in the names of your IAP items.

App Screenshots

According to StoreMaven, 60% of users won’t swipe past your first two screenshot images. A better version of your first two screenshots can boost your conversions by 25%!

To make great screenshots, make sure each screenshot is telling a single message about your app. Show your strongest messages in the first two screenshots. The best apps use all five screenshot slots to impress their users, and you should do the same.

Adding short caption texts on your screenshots can help, but make sure they are on a clean background. And try to create a positive impression in the viewers’ mind at all times.

Avoid login, registrations, purchase forms, ads and even “Welcome” screen in your screenshots. Make the best use of the screenshots to tell your users why they should love your app.

App Store SEO Tips:

Vertical ScreenshotsKeep the screenshots vertical. The users can see more screenshots on the narrow screens when the screenshots are vertical.

Vertical screenshots of Clash of Clans

Vertical screenshots of Uber

App Screenshot CheckerTo optimize your app screenshots, use this tool checks your screenshots’ dimensions, count, orientations, and their compatibility with various iOS devices, and tells you how to improve.

App Preview Video

Making a video may be difficult but it can boost install rates by more than 23% according to StoreMaven. Don’t forget to use a good poster frame (iOS) / feature graphic (Google Play). This graphic has a big impact to whether your visitors would watch your video.

App Store SEO Tips:

App Marketing Video

Here are some of the essential elements of an effective app marketing video. They are recommended by Apptamin, a company well-known for its app videos and trailers:

Use the first 5 seconds to grab the viewer’s attention

Focus on the best features, instead of all features

Your video should make sense even with the sound turned off

Include a call-to-action

Remember, 80% of users don’t watch past first 12 seconds of the video. Do make sure you keep it short and to the point. Avoid any fade-in and “welcome” type of message at the beginning of your video.

iOS 11 notes:

In the search result page of iOS 11, up to three App Preview videos and/or screenshots can appear, rather than just two as in iOS 10. Videos will always be displayed before screenshots and the first video will now play automatically, but the sound will be muted by default.

App Store Ratings – Getting Five-Star Ratings

How can you get more five-star ratings for your app?

Delay asking for a rating until there’s a likely moment of constructive feedback. For instance, ask when the user completed a reservation, finished a mission in a game, etc. When the time comes, ask nicely, and don’t beg.

What does that mean? Circa News app is a perfect example. It got 90% five-star ratings for every major version. Here is a flowchart of how it asks users if they would like to provide feedback:

The key is to encourage satisfied users to leave positive reviews and deflect negative reviews by using a “send feedback” option.

For iOS Developers:

Since the released of iOS 10.3, you can only ask a user for an app rating three times per year.

To make the most of these scarce rating opportunities, you should first identify your app lovers, and then ask them for ratings at the right time.

You may be wondering:

“How can I identify who are my app lovers?”

You can do so by some simple surveys or dialogs.

For example, you can ask this famous “Net Promoter” question on a 10-point scale:

“How likely is it that you would recommend our app to a friend or colleague?”

Those who respond with a score of 9 to 10 are your “Promoters”, or app lovers.

And they are likely to give you 4 to 5-star ratings when you later ask them for app ratings at the right time.

To do this, you can either develop your own version of rating and feedback flow or simply use the tools like Apptentive.

App Store SEO Tips:

The Right Paths To A ReviewDirect only positive reviews to App Store, and negative reviews to support.

But what if I already have many bad reviews?

Luckily in iOS 11, you can decide when to reset the average ratings and start over with a clean slate.

In iOS 10 or before, you can use these tips about how to sweep bad reviews under the rug. He also tells you how to give a positive first impression about your app by making good use of the five-star reviews.

App Store Ratings – Reply To Reviews

Remember to reply the app reviews and feedback! Only the ones who care about your app will spend the time to leave a comment. Show them you care about them as well! This is a great way to let the visitors know that the developer is active too.

For Google Play, there is a “Reply to a review” option in Developer Console for you to do just that.

For Apple App Store, you can also do this since iOS 10.3 release in March 2017.

App Store Ratings – One-Star Reviews

One-star reviews are your friends. Read them all. Try to understand why the users complained your app, and think about what you need to do to turn them into five-star reviews. This thought process helps you improve your app from the user perspective. Also, fix all serious bugs, crashes and performance issues.

In the end getting more and better app reviews comes down to creating a great app users love. Listen, improve your apps and repeat until you are topping the app store ratings.

David Janner of MAKE APP Magazine conducted a localization experiment. In his experiment, he only localized the app name, the keywords, and sometimes the top line in the app description. After this simple localization, his app received a massive 767%boost in downloads. Before localization, the downloads were mainly from within the US. After localization, his downloads looked like this:

According to OneSky, only 31% of the world’s total app revenue came from the U.S., while 41% came from Asia, and 23% came from Europe. In particular, China has already surpassed the U.S. by both iOS app download and revenue. If your app only has an English version for the U.S. market, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

App Store SEO Tips:

App Localization Strategy
Localize your app listing first to see how well your app performs in different countries. You can then decide if you should perform full localization of the whole app for the best performing countries.

Icon and Screenshot LocalizationDifferent countries have distinct preference of icon colors, screenshot layouts and annotations. Check out these posts about icon colors and screenshot localization for more insights.

App Localization – Best Countries For Your App

Now you know the strategy, but which countries should you start first?

If your app is already available in more than one country, you can use app analytics to find out the top countries by your app downloads. Check the official languages of the top five countries, and localize your app listing if you haven’t done so.

Depending on your priority, you can also do the same using top countries by revenue, ARPU, conversion rate, active devices or retention.

App Store SEO Tips:

Predict Your Next Successful MarketsThis tool predicts where your next successful markets are based on ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Conversion Rates, and more. With this information, you can proactively localize your app to grasp the market opportunities.

App Indexing – Firebase Indexing

For both iOS & Android App Developers:

Google’s Firebase App Indexing allows users to search the dynamic content in your app, and it works for both Android and iOS devices.

Firebase App Indexing not only helps improve your user engagement, it is also a user acquisition opportunity. It is because it allows users to search for your app contents no matter your app is installed or not.

If you have a content-rich app, you should enable Firebase App Indexing to make to most of these opportunities. See the official documentation here.

Why is conversion rate such a big deal?

Keyword ranking and number of downloads are not the best metrics to measure the performance of App Store SEO. There are many external factors that can influence those two metrics. For example, a big competing publisher may publish a hugely popular app and shift the apps in the keyword ranking by a margin (e.g. The impact of Pokemon Go and related apps on the keyword “Pokemon” and “Go”). Or you run App Store SEO and an advertisement campaign at the same time and the number of the downloads become not purely organic.

On the other hand, CRs are independent of market competition nor the source of traffic. They give you the true picture of App Store SEO effectiveness.

2. CR reflects the likelihood of getting ranked

CR is a natural ranking signal in app store search. If lots of people search certain keywords, click on the same search result, and download the same app, Google Play and the App Store should receive a strong message:

“Users want to see this app!”

and place the app in a dominant spot (i.e. rank or featured list).

3. CR saves you money!

It’s just simple math: if you double your CR, you cut your advertising cost by half for the same amount of downloads. For the same reason, if you haven’t optimized your CR, don’t spend big bucks on advertising campaigns! You would be wasting your money.

Just a side story: some ranking manipulation farms even go far and take advantage of this. They offer keyword-rank-manipulation service. They boost the ranking of an app by “searching” the app by specific keywords, tapping the app in the search results and download the app — the exact flow of conversion funnel.

App Conversion Rates – Download CR

Now, let’s look at Download CR:

Download CR = App Units / Product Page Views x 100%

Folks from SplitMetrics have done a wonderful job on this topic. They gathered the download conversion rates from hundreds of experiments with over 10,000,000 users. Here are the best conversion rates in each app category in their study:

Based on this graph, you should set your download CR target to at least 60% for most categories. For Health & Fitness and Education categories, you may set your target a bit lower to around 40% and 50% respectively.

If your download CR is lower than the target benchmark, you should follow all tips in this article to improve this metric.

App Store SEO Tips:

Benchmark Your Conversion RateUse this tool to benchmark your app’s conversion rate (CR). It compares your download CR with your app category’s median and best CR, and tells you what you should do.

App Size

Try to make your app smaller than 150MB for iOS app, or 100MB for Google Play app. It is because users cannot download apps that are bigger than these sizes using cellular service.

So for example, if a user on a bus or a train can’t download “now”, it is unlikely the user will write down the name and try again X hours later when they’re home.

Need some proof? This post from appfigures shows that ~98% of the top 100 free and ~62% of paid iOS and Android games are under 100MB.

Do you think 100MB is not enough for your app? Take a look at Clash of Clans. Its iOS version is just 85.3 MB.

App Store SEO Tips:

Make Your App SmallerTo reduce the app size, consider compressing some of the graphical assets or make some of the contents downloadable after install.

Compare with the Top 100 AppsDo you want to know how your app size compares to that of the top 100 apps? Use this tool to see whether your app size falls in the reasonable app size range of the top 100 apps.

App Pricing – Free with Ads

If you choose to make in-app advertising revenue, try to use native ads. They are created to fit the exact context of the app they appear on. This way, they serve as extra content for the app itself rather than a piece of promotional materials. Check out this post to see more reasons why native ads are better than traditional banner ads.

App Compatibility – Apple Watch

But don’t just copy your original app features directly to your Apple Watch app. Make good use of the Apple Watch characteristics to improve your user experience. Need inspirations? Check out these 50 best Apple Watch apps.

App Compatibility – Family Sharing

For iOS apps, Apple offers the Family Sharing opt-in for app developers. Family Sharing allows up to six family members to share app purchases on the same credit card across devices and parents to supervise their children purchases. Supporting Family Sharing means you can reach more family members and improves user loyalty.

Apple also clarifies that in-app purchases are not transferable through Family Sharing. It means Family Sharing gives higher revenue potential for apps with in-app purchases.

App Updates

Statistics show that there is a high correlation between high ratings and app update frequency. In fact, releasing regular updates has many benefits. It improves user loyalty and keeps an app top of mind because your app will show up in the updates list in the app stores. Apple and Google also like to see app updates because they show you’re committed to the app and that it’s still being maintained.

For these 25 top iOS apps, the average was about 30 days between updates. I’d recommend at least an update a month, and up to once a week.

Don’t forget to use push notifications to alert users to new app updates. They have a big impact on your update downloads. Ideally, you should only send notifications to the users who haven’t downloaded your latest version. In case you can’t distinguish who have and who haven’t, you should word your message carefully to avoid the confusion.

For examples,

Hey! Have you checked for updates in the App Store recently?Updates! Are all your apps up to date? Check the Updates button in the App Store.

Of course, you shouldn’t do an update just for the sake of doing an update. Your updates should always improve your app in some ways, either by bug fixings or enhancements.

After you have published the changes, keep an eye on the keyword rankings. The rankings change right after you published the new version. Target to make your app rank within top 10 of all keywords. If your new keywords are too hard to rank, you might have to replace them with your old keywords.

Review your App Store SEO every three weeks or four because that is when big trends of app ranking change. Don’t give up if the results of first few optimizations are not turning out well. App marketing takes time and App Store SEO needs many observations to master.

Hi Marcus!
Great article, thanks for sharing! Love your point about localization.
As I have been pushing for fresh research on how to increase App download rates with localization services, I would like to add a few more statements.
First of all, it is very important to localize keywords. I would like to underline again – to localize, not to translate. If you translate the keywords, that means, that you do not use the keywords that the target audience uses while searching the web in their own language. Word for word translation or dictionary translation doesn’t work here. To boost downloads, you should be visitble. And visibility is possible with the relevant keywords in the target language.

The second point is to organize customer support in the language that the users speak. It is quite easy, you can find a freelance translator and agree on some fixed fees.

The third point is to localize email marketing.

And the fourth one is to localize social media.

Of course, it might require some investments. But fortunately there are still good options. Find freelancers, make an agreement on a monthly basis, or use translators from fiverr.

Wow!! It’s a really great post.. All most important tips are cover here and thanks for sharing,it’s really helpful post and easily represent here, all beginner easily learn it and follow all the steps..

Thank you for informative article. Yes developing an app is a tough job but it’s appearence on stores also plays an important role to get download, It’s appearence should be unique and attractive with informative.

Hello Marcus,
I like your post really. The points you have mentioned are familiar to all of us but the mistake we all usually do is that not paying required attention to all these and wander in the search for something that provides overnight results. But in my opinion, if mention points in the article taken seriously into consideration then can also make huge and good results.

Thanks for sharing the full guide for App Store Optimization. I also bookmark this blog. So I think in future, whenever you update the blog. I easily get new updates about ASO techniques.
Please keep sharing!

Good article. I think one of the important points to understand also is that reviews have a freshness period. also in the same way with downloads. So in theory an app that has a healthy grow can outrank an old app with tons of downloads and a tons of reviews… is not about the number is also about the freshness and relevance.

Marcus, thank you for the informative article!
You’ve pointed out great pieces of advice to boost app downloads. I believe app developers tend to make common mistakes when trying to attract users. It will help me to avoid some of the more common issues.

Great post, so informative and helpful! Thanks for sharing the full guide for App Store Optimization. I also bookmark this blog. So I think in future, whenever you update the blog. I easily get new updates about ASO techniques.

That is really interesting information you share there Marcus! There are lots of application at the app store to grab onto, I would recommend this one for the apple users who’re with wild ideas to turn it to some game or apps.

“Avoid any special characters in your app name. They will cause iTunes to refer to your app’s numeric ID to scan for relevant keywords instead of your app name.” (What about ampersand? Will having “&” in app name also cause this problem?)

Thanks a lot, for the great App Store SEO techniques. I have gone through various stories related to SEO but your one is quite different and interesting. The ultimate goal of developers is to get app downloads. Hoping these methods can help us a lot. So I Thank you again for sharing such great article. Keep Writing.